


Horribly Elitist

by Squeeb100



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Friendship, and obviously so is shad, awkward smart boys, can be read as platonic or romantic, celestia (city in the sky), city in the sky (twilight princess), illiterate link, it's shippy if you squint a little, link can't read, link is super smart, link mentions boobs real briefly, link teaches shad, not overtly, oocca, shad and link are awkward, shad teaches link, why is this not a headcanon people have except for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 00:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squeeb100/pseuds/Squeeb100
Summary: Shad's been puzzling over the runes and the cannon Link helped him discover weeks ago. And when Link calmly enters Telma's bar, lightly toasted from a fight with a dragon (really), he provides a few answers. Shad may be horribly elitist, but he's not beyond respecting someone different from him. And Link is a surprising person.or, Shad and Link talk about the city in the sky, the Oocca, and the fate of the world, Link can't read, and both of them make some promises.





	Horribly Elitist

**Author's Note:**

> TP Link being illiterate is a favorite headcanon of mine and somehow it got into my head that this was the way it needed to be expressed. I don't ship this, really, but you wouldn't know it from this fic, because both characters ran away from me and it got much much gayer than expected. 
> 
> I'm still writing fanfiction for a twelve year old game.

Shad’s favorite place to sit and pore over his notes was Telma’s bar--during the day it was quiet and secluded, especially with Ashei out of the way exploring Snowpeak, Rusl back in his hometown, and Auru on an extended research trip to Lake Hylia. He would sit at a table in the back with a glass of water (alcohol impaired cognitive function), shoving Louise the cat out of the way whenever she decided to hop up and pad across a freshly inked page. 

Since the discovery of the cannon in the sanctuary, Shad had been flipping back through his notes and editing them relentlessly. The runes he had discovered with Link’s help blew several of his father’s previous theories of Oocca culture out of the water, and he’d gone years back into his journals trying to make sense of it. He wished to discuss the notes at length with Link, but after the discovery of the cannon both it and the hero had vanished. Shad wasn’t closely associated with the boy, but knew he was prone to disappear for weeks at a time before showing back up suddenly, and so he didn’t hold much hope of seeing him anytime soon.

But one overcast afternoon, as Shad sat alone at his table tapping his quill against a page, the bar door opened and Link sauntered in as casually as a man can with singed hair and bloodstains on his tunic. Link’s face was smudged with what appeared to be ash, and he had a possible bite wound on his sword arm. He didn’t notice Shad immediately, instead sitting at the bar and folding his hands, looking around calmly. 

“Link?” Shad asked softly, in a gentle attempt to get his attention. Link turned and saw Shad sitting nearby his face brightening in recognition. He waved, and Shad stood, opening his arms in a question. “What happened to you, dear fellow, you look a mess!”

“Dragon,” Link said simply. “Where’s Telma?”

“She went out,” Shad replied, then took an insistent step toward the younger man. “Are you hurt? Do you require assistance?”

“‘M fine. Most of these injuries are old.” Link pressed his thumbs together in what might have been a nervous gesture.

“Well, come sit, come sit. Speak with me, Link, I have many questions for you.” Shad paused, then haltingly added, “I-if, of course, you have the time to answer.”

Link, predictably, joined Shad at the table, where they each assumed a seat. 

“Did you say...a, a dragon?” Shad asked, intrigued.

“Yeah.” 

Link had initially seemed a simple man to Shad. He had appeared from a small province weilding an inexpertly forged sword, speaking, when he did speak (which was rarely), with a backlands accent where “i” was “oi” and “th” was “d” and “r” was a tapped, harsh sound. He was startled by running water, wore clothes unbecoming of a man in the city, and spoke improper Hylian. He was young, younger than Shad, though only by a few years, but was far less excitable than most young men Shad had encountered. He was ruggedly good-looking and well-muscled, but frequently dirty. Sometimes he spoke to what seemed to be thin air, when he thought no one was looking. It was horribly elitist, but Shad had found Link’s behavior entirely unbefitting a Hylian. Perhaps, he had thought, it was to be expected, when he had lived among country humans his entire life.

Link possessed a strange innocence, Shad had decided, despite the many battles he had fought and won, the many foes he had killed. It was the way his face opened up when he smiled, the way he spoke the whole truth as he understood it. But he wasn’t unintelligent, as Shad had first assumed.  _ That  _ was in his eyes, eyes that Telma had described as akin to those of a feral beast, though Shad saw only raw intelligence, a desire to prove something. Calculation, as though everything were a problem to solve, a stark contrast to the boy’s trusting nature.

“Yeah?” Shad echoed disbelievingly. “Don’t lead me on this way, Link, do tell me about the dragon. I didn’t know dragons existed, yet you say you fought one! Did you win?”

Link suddenly looked a little thrilled as he thought back to what had apparently been an epic battle. “Yeah, I won.” He didn’t look proud, so much as excited by the memory. “The dragon had something I needed. And she was terrorizing the city.”

“What city--Link, I have heard nothing of dragons. I know news travels slowly, but goodness, I would think!” Shad leaned forward. He’d never known Link to speak anything but the truth, but he also hadn’t known Link that long.

“Wasn’t in Hyrule,” Link explained, then looked excited, as though he had suddenly remembered something very important. He also looked...mischievous, maybe? Like he held information Shad didn’t, a prospect which put the scholar out slightly. “Was in the city in the sky. That’s what I’ve been calling it, because that’s essentially what it is. The Oocca call it Celestia, though.”

“The what? Where?” Shad stood up and leaned far into Link’s personal space in his sudden excitement. Had Link  _ been  _ to the home of the Oocca? 

“I was going to tell you as soon as I got back and...I just got back.” Link laughed a little, leaning away unconsciously. “That cannon we found, Shad, it’s meant to shoot you up to the city in the sky. I don’t know if the Oocca built it or if someone here did but I had a friend fix it and then launched myself out of it to see where I’d go.”

Shad paused in his excitement to process that. “That seems like...a dreadfully risky decision. How did you know you’d survive?” The scientific process was a real thing, but shooting oneself out of random cannons to  _ see where you’d go, _ that seemed...foolhardy.

Link shrugged. “I didn’t. But that’s how I get most things done. And if I hadn’t climbed into that cannon, I would never have reached the city.”

There was pause for processing that information before Shad, beside himself, heard questions begin to tumble from his mouth in a rather undignified manner. “Oh, Link, you must tell me everything!” Link’s eyes widened in surprise. “About the cannon, about the Oocca, about Celestia! I have--here, I have notes,” he shoved one of his journals toward the boy, “and I’d love it if...if it’s not too much trouble, if you perhaps could read through them, make additions and omissions, I never thought...I never thought I’d  _ meet  _ someone who had  _ been  _ to Celestia--there’s so much you must teach me!” He offered Link the journal again, somewhat insistently.

Link looked overwhelmed, then regretful. “Shad I--you know, I wish I could…” his hand disappeared under his odd green hat (Shad had been trying to figure the hat out for weeks now) as he rubbed the back of his neck, another endearing nervous gesture. 

Shad paused, enthusiasm dampened. “Oh, lad, I’m sorry, I got very excited, I know you’re very busy, world to save, and all that.” He closed his book and straightened his spectacles, ashamed of his outburst. “I’ll just--”

“No, it! It isn’t that.” Link interrupted clumsily. “Shad, I’d really love to help you. I want to. I just can’t read,” he finished. And that was the most nonchalant admission of inadequacy Shad had ever heard. Link sounded regretful because he couldn’t help Shad more than anything else. He was completely unconcerned with the fact that he couldn’t...couldn’t  _ read, _ a concept so foreign to a scholar that Shad was struck dumb for several heartbeats. Link smiled a little at the reaction.

“You can’t...you can’t  _ read?”  _ Shad asked, hoping for clarification.

“Or write,” Link added helpfully. “I mean, I know what some words look like, and can work simple stuff out, like a postcard, sometimes, but no. I can’t read.”

Reading and writing were the most important things in the world to Shad. They were the focus of his career, of his  _ life. _ His father had taught him how, he’d mastered both at a young age. It made him incredibly sad to think that Link had never read a book, had never written down his thoughts and experiences, which were many and extraordinary.

“You can’t read,” Shad said again. It was sounding dumb at this point, but he was having trouble processing the idea that someone so intelligent could be illiterate. 

“I never had to,” Link replied. He didn’t seem offput by Shad’s reaction. “Until this chosen hero thing came up I worked on a ranch. I learned swordplay and wrestled with goats and harvested pumpkins with kids following me around. I lived in a simple house without running water and rode my horse around and bathed in a river, and until a couple months ago hadn’t ever left home.” He seemed a little wistful at the thought.

“How do you read a map?” Shad asked, still processing.

“I can usually recognize the words for cities, and when I can’t, well, that’s the nice thing about maps. They’ve got pictures.” Link grinned.  _ He  _ clearly felt no sense of inadequacy or unintelligence. This was just the way he was. “I could still help you, if you’d like, but you’d have to read to me.”

Shad hadn’t even  _ considered  _ that. Foolish. “O-oh! Of course, I’d be happy to. However, if you’ve got the time, I’d love for you to simply...tell me about it. What is it like?”

“Gorgeous,” Link supplied.

Shad opened up his journal again and readied his quill. “Details, dear boy. Tell me what it  _ looks  _ like. Tell me of its people, its technology. Is it true the Oocca are our ancestors?”

Link suddenly looked a thousand miles away. “It looks white from a distance. The city,” he began. “It’s gray and white stone, and there are vines crawling all over it--strong, old vines, far older than anyone alive. There’s plant life there I’ve never seen in Hyrule. There are pools of water everywhere, bluer than the sky, and sometimes a cloud will pass straight through the city and everything goes white.” Shad scribbled away at his notes furiously as Link spoke. “The Oocca, I didn’t get much of a grasp on their society, but it was organized. They had shops and family units, though I don’t know if there are male and female Oocca in our sense of the word. They’ve all got these weird little...saggy, little breasts, I guess.” Link made a somewhat vulgar gesture with his hands, brows furrowed, and laughed. Shad felt his face heat up as he dutifully wrote the word ‘breasts.’ For science. “They’re a little creepy. I’m good friends with one, though, we keep running into each other everywhere. Still creepy, but she’s nice, and speaks our language.”

“Do they have a separate spoken tongue?” Shad asked eagerly.

“They sound like birds, and I can’t understand them. Some of them communicated with me, and some seemed unable to. They were very helpful, though. I sometimes, uh, needed help flying across gaps, and they had me covered. I felt kinda bad but. I killed the dragon for them. It was breaking bridges and stuff.”

“What about their technology?” Shad was on his third page of notes. He’d left spaces for pictures, hoping Link could fill them eventually. 

Link absolutely lit up. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever  _ seen, _ Shad, it’s fantastic! A lot of it runs on magic, switches that I’ve seen used other places, but there’s heavy gearwork involved, and manipulation of air! They have these gigantic...whirling, fans, I guess,” here he gestured in an attempt to imitate their motion, “that speed up air and push it through and create a draft strong enough to lift my weight. I almost got thrown off the edge more than once. It’s as impressive as the cannon, which somehow has a homing mechanism, or the stone owls that moved with magic. I showed you that, right, the rod that makes statues move? It’s incredible. I’ve seen similar technology in an old temple and I wonder if the Oocca built it, too.”

Shad had never heard Link speak so animatedly, or so  _ much.  _ He was incredibly excited. Shad wouldn’t have taken Link for someone so interested in engineering, but he’d misjudged Link many times before. He was also losing a lot of words to Link’s backlands accent.

“I wish I could  _ take  _ you there, so you could see it yourself. I’m not much of a scholar, I don’t know what you need,” Link laughed, slowing down, and rubbed his neck again. “I could. Take you. Not now, but maybe...when this is over.” Link settled a little more, then looked doubtful. He didn’t entirely trust, Shad realized, that he’d survive this war.

“I would appreciate that immensely,” was all the scholar said. 

“The cannon flight is a little painful. And fast. Are you afraid of heights?” Link turned those incredibly sincere blue eyes on him again. He  _ meant  _ it. When this was over, he planned to take Shad to Celestia, out of the pureness of his heart. Link was so  _ good  _ that it hurt Shad a little to think about. 

“I’ll manage. This is my life’s work we’re speaking about, Link!” Shad couldn’t keep from grinning. The hero just laughed gently, and it was hard to remember that this man had just killed a dragon. That he was covered in his own blood. 

“When this is over with, then. We’ll go.” Link smiled that open, honest smile, pressing his thumbs together.

“Where are you off to now, then, old boy?” Shad inquired, placing his quill on the table.

“Desert. Have to fix something. Then probably a castle.” That was incredibly vague.

“Hyrule Castle?”

“No, a different one. There’s someone there I need to take out. Then, who knows. Maybe Hyrule Castle.”

“Well, when you go, my boy, give the word, and the Resistance will be right there with you. This is our land too, and we’ll fight to save it.” Link just nodded. “And then, when we’re done, perhaps...if you’d like, I could help. Teach you,” Shad stumbled. “If you’d like to learn to read. I could help teach you.”

“Thanks, Shad. I think that would be nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to see Link and Shad's Celestia expedition hit me up and this could have a second chapter.


End file.
